Network Solutions: Unethical SEO (Page 1 of 4 )
Network Solutions displays a real talent for tripping itself up with unethical behavior. Sometimes it gets caught and called on the conduct quickly, as happened when it engaged in domain name tasting. Other times, though, it can continue for months before enough people catch on to make a real stink.
Ordinarily, we'd publish a story about Network Solutions on our Web Hosters web site. As a domain name seller and registry, the company goes back to the early days of the web, before the US government bowed to the pressure to allow competition in domain name registration. This move drove down the price of domain names from $35 per year per name to as little as $6 or less.
You can read about one of the ways that Network Solutions unethically tried to gain greater control of the market here. Basically, every time you visited NetSol's web site and performed a domain name search using its Whois tool, the company bought the domain name itself if it wasn't already owned. If you didn't buy the domain name immediately, you would come back later to discover that Network Solutions was the owner of record. You could only buy the domain from NetSol - and the company's prices for domain names were and are significantly higher than many other registrars' prices. NetSol gave the dubious justification that it was trying to protect its customers from domain tasters - but the fact that it was doing so by domain tasting itself escaped no one.
You can read the rest of the story at the link I provided; this article is not about that lovely debacle. It's about a matter that is even closer to the hearts of the SEOs and web site owners: ethical SEO practices. Or more precisely, it's about the unethical SEO practices in which Network Solutions is engaging.
If you haven't received a letter from them yet, this may come as a surprise to you; I only heard about it myself in early March, and Network Solutions has been offering SEO services at least since the middle of last year (and probably longer). In this article, I'm going to look at Network Solution's apparent guarantee, the fine print on the promise, and the ways in which it violates the principles of ethical SEO. By the time I'm finished, you'll be well-armed whether the company makes the offer directly to you, or a client tells you that they've heard "Network Solutions will do the same thing for me that you're promising to do - and for less money."
Next: Doing it Cheap >>
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